


XVI - The Tower

by Lord_Turkish



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Extremely Dubious Consent, Masturbation, Mating Cycles/In Heat, More tags to be added soon because bad shit gonna happen, Multi, Things are about to go so fucking poorly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-03-26 10:58:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3848392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lord_Turkish/pseuds/Lord_Turkish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Words are a gift. Eridan, in his high, had forgotten this in his daydreams of neo-dualscar biographies and war stories waiting to be written. More realistic, he assured himself, than his doe-eyed aspirations from the beginning of the Program. He already had this new narrative in the bag.</p><p>But if that were true, we wouldn’t be telling this story.</p><p>Because this isn’t a story about a violet realizing his mastrubatory  dreams of historical glory. It’s a little tougher than that. A little more… hopeful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Ascent

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Piece the Shards Together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1918719) by [Lizardlicks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardlicks/pseuds/Lizardlicks). 



Eridan had been primed for prestige from the day he hatched.

Since his little wriggler eyes could perceive color he learned how precious the violet that ran through his veins was. Once he knew it was impossible to forget; his lusus cherished him like one of the empress’s jewels and spoilt him to the core because of it. The old seahorse turned a blind eye to his fits and was there in a whistle when he needed to be doted upon.

As Eridan grew he learned to treat himself more and more like the royalty he knew he would become. He combed his blood color into his hair and strung gold and silver spoils across his throat alongside the gems glittering on the pierced tines of his earfins. He savored getting into scuffles—first in FLARP, then in post-schoolfeeding military camps—just to see the jagged imprints his rings would leave on his opponents skin. As a stupidly wealthy troll about the only thing he was poor in was modesty, a narcissist in full bloom. Sure his vanity wore the ties between he and his friends but it was well worth it in his opinion. Kiss his boots, envy him seasick and be crushed beneath his heels; he would do his ancestor proud.

Of course his pride wasn’t without its holes. What few friends he managed to cling to through adolescence made sure to score new ones frequently, as to keep him at least partially grounded. He had half a mind to be thankful though he rarely expressed it. Especially with Feferi.

She left more of a weeping wound than a hole on him.

However even the worst injuries heal with time. As they all approached ten sweeps he found this to be the case. Where he had been accepted into the prestigious Officer’s Program she had been driven further into hiding. Now that she was of age her horror terror of a lusus had already moved onto yet another doomed fuchsia, leaving her orphaned and defenseless against the Empress. Stepping into the light would mean immediate execution.

So in the shadows she thrived, Eridan as one of the two living trolls who knew where she’d settled. The other was Sollux who was masquerading incognito right along with her. Turns out he didn’t fancy the thought of becoming a starship battery and he had elected to watch Feferi’s back while she boned up to confront the Empress. Had that happened a sweep sooner, it would have driven Eridan mad with jealousy. Now though…

Okay. Perhaps he was still a touch mad.

Didn’t stop him from swearing to support her in anyway he could. He’d turn the tide from the inside. Climb the ranks to the point where he’d have priceless information to offer her, the crux to superseding Her Imperiousness and claim rule. That was the vision for him, he could imagine how’d it be outlined in future history books. It was also what carried him through his first backbreaking perigees of the Program

Out of his class of three hundred and eleven, twenty of them had been culled within the first two perigees. This was no surprise to anyone. It was norm for the classes graduating the Program to have been paired down to about a quarter of their original size over the two sweeps of training. A sixth for an exceptionally volatile class.

Eridan’s class was nothing if not volatile.

The fact he was still alive was a miracle in itself as he was always playing catch-up with his burlier classmates. He was a regular wizard with written exams and sharpshooting, sure, but he always ranked lowest tier for everything else. He hadn’t enough meat on his bones, he hadn’t enough true fights and lacked common street sense thanks to his pampered upbringing. He was never without bruises and cuts, physically unable to prevent their accumulation.

But he wasn’t going to die, not a chance. Not with Feferi’s expectation weighing heavy on his shoulders. He would succeed for her.

Become stronger for her.

Faster.

Smarter.

For her and the Empire.

As harsh as training was, this hope was spectacularly easy to maintain. Turns out the young Empress-to-be and her aloof psionic had accumulated a bit of a following among the low and midbloods. All he had to do was mention her name and he had won the favor of a handful of attendants, one of which who claimed to be connected with a small support group just off the ocean shore. Word has it they have direct contact with the psionic, and through him, the future empress. While Eridan wasn’t chomping at the bit to have Sollux rifling through his mail, he wasn’t about to turn down a chance for contacting Feferi.

So he wrote. He’d find time between spars or beneath his bunk blankets late in the day and with stiff knuckles and the occasional drip of violet, he would scribble out letters so long they’d make Karkat blush. He’d then fold them in quarters (never half, he wanted to piss Sollux off) and hand them off to a trusted attendent who, supposedly, sent them off to where Sollux could pick them up and complete the delivery. Eridan was never sure of this however, since he never received word back. While a bitter part of him begrudged this he understood why—sending out mail in their situation would be thoughtless. It’d only take one letter to fall in the wrong hands. Only one letter to put themselves and their entire operation at risk.

Rebellion was a delicate creature. Release her into the world too soon and she’ll buckle down and die. Eridan knew this. Feared it. God, he prayed to nothing and everything each night that wouldn’t be Feferi.

But as time would reveal, it would.

The news came crashing around him all too soon. He woke to it bubbling in every surrounding conversation in the bunks one bleak morning.

_“Fefeta, I think that was her name?”_

_“Dumb bitch charged the empress outright.”_

_“I pity her.”_

_“Didn’t stand a chance.”_

He received hell when he skipped the day’s training. Wasn’t his fault, really. His stomach had held him at bile gunpoint, forcing him wretch in a lavatory stall for five hours. It wasn’t until two attendants dragged him out, puffy-eyed and still gagging, that he faced full punishment. Ten lashings, two for every hour missed.

Medical attention afterward was forbidden. He would have to deal with the consequences of slow recovery alone. On top of that, if he missed another session he would be culled by the first attendant to cross him.

That night he considered skipping again for that exact reason.

He was unsure of what drove him out of bed the next morning, through the abolition routine and in roll line with his back (scabbed and still oozing day-old violet) straight. Hell he couldn’t answer for the strenuous perigees that followed all blurred and blotted across his memory in a grease smudge that vaguely resembled anguish.

Eventually his memory cleared. Eventually he cleaned his glasses and sheets and clothes and more shockingly started talking again. Because sometimes, sometimes you forget what a gift words are while you’ve got them. Which makes the silences more percussive. More dead.

Like Feferi.

Feferi was dead.

His fixation was six feet under but while the change in religion was rough it was survivable. Sooner than he ever thought was capable he’d found new faith. After all his letters were nothing but the ocean’s backwash and his old hope (fuck hope, let it drown with his sentiment) slaughtered. As sluggish and sure aswaves wearing away shore his thoughts dwelled less and less with the fallen heir. He grew bored of wondering if Sollux had found asylum and sick of asking rebel attendants for updates on the most likely abandoned seaside encampment. 

Soon he couldn’t give a lusii’s ass who took the reigns of the resistance. Because, damn it, he wasn’t about to emotionally invest himself with another revolutionary sod.

But even when faded her memory rang with every strike of his blade. Every drop of blood he drew bled fuchsia to his eyes.

He’d excel where she failed.

He’d kill what she couldn’t.

He’d be sure to strike twice as much terror to make up for her loss.

Because now, now he was alive. His heart screamed and his fingers twitched. He was growing. Excelling, even. 

Because she sure as fuck wasn’t.

Sollux, likely, wasn’t.

Karkat—

Well.

We’ll address him later.

For now let’s focus on Eridan. This is his story, after all.

He was fifth in his class by the end of the first sweep, the halfway point of the Program. Only a third of the class remained and the fact that soon there’d be even fewer was drilled into his skull. Survival and the promise of prestige soon monopolized his free time. 

He had resigned himself from day one that he would never be as beefy as the rest of his fellow recruits. For starters he was a violet not a blue or purple, so he was already smaller than most of his class from the gate. While he shared his fellow highblood’s warrior endurance seadwellers tended toward leaner, more compact builds with a nice layer of fat to boot. All the better to swim with, since solid blocks of muscle tended to sink like rocks when confronted with anything deeper than a wriggler pool.

Eridan was thin even within his own caste. Hell even some ceruleans and teals out-girthed him. His body simply didn’t want to grow excessive muscle—protein was an alternian legend to his bones. He wasn’t weak but he certainly wasn’t strong either which was a real bear when it came to hand-to-hand. Nearly got his neck snapped on multiple occasions because of it.

He was, however, quicker than a whip crack and could bend in ways that made even his war-vet instructors uncomfortable. That was how he wasn’t dead. Slippery damn fish, he was called. Wriggling out of the tightest holds at only a cost of a few popped joints. Once he grew more comfortable with his fighting style, learned to stop automatically equating it to fleeing or some other cowardice, he joked about it. Damnable genetics, he’d say, maybe all that highblood inbreeding within Mother Grub was starting to show. Or maybe he was the offspring of some contortionist breeder who was on the lamb along the coasts, one who struck up the most illicit romance with an Alternian noble before, well. That was a yarn he only spun if he was exceptionally comfortable with his company. Or exceptionally high.

Either way he’d later find out the joke ran rawer than he could had ever imagined.

Naturally if it took him a sweep to grow into his own skin, it’d take two for him to become cocky in it.

A quarter through his second sweep he’d successfully scaled his way to second of his class. Bending, slipping and sliding his way through melee and even managing to cull a handful of his peers during roulette duals. By then survival had taken a back seat to prestige and there was only one troll keeping him from making this the best fucking underdog story ever.

That troll’s name was Nektan.

The two of them had been poke-and-dodging each other since day one of the Program. Sure every Program recruit also had been doing similar shit but the difference was that these were two violets and, more importantly, by the time second sweep rolled around they were the only two violets left. 

But even then nobody would have guessed that when they saw those two first butt heads they were watching the opening of the next chapter in Alternian history.

They were witnessing the conception of a special kind of monster. A monster that was twelve perigees overdue by the time Eridan had challenged Nektan for his spot as top of the class. Twelve perigees of the coyest expressions of hate. Call him lovesick, call him a flirt, but Eridan wanted Nektan dead in the purest way.

_I’ll bury you with lowest honors so that my grave looks grander next to yours._

_I’ll gladly let you scar my body. They’ll be trophies to brag about when I eventually slay you._

_Us violets are like cuttlefish: you know there can’t be two of us for long…_

The two of them made sure their spite could grow no stronger before delivering it in its entire, wailing glory on the training grounds. Neither of them were allowed to do so naturally (unfair in a controlled environment, since Eridan specialized rifle and Nektan’s rapier would do jackshit long range),instead they were each afforded a short blade to cut it out instead.

Cesarian dual, if you will.

Apparently it was the battle of the ages, an entire hour and seventeen minutes of stalemate and shallow cuts as the rest of their class were glued watching from the sidelines. We could waste some time dictating the details of that match, drum up some real tension and get people really wondering who rose victorious.

But fuck that.

That’s not what this story is about.

Eridan won.

He won with his heel pressed against Nektan’s throat and his blade dangled a short two feet from his fellow violet’s eyes. The field had become a cacophony of whoops and yells, trolls calling for either Nektan’s death or sparing and great godly fuck, did that get Eridan off. He could feel the choking lurch of his opponent’s adam’s apple beneath the thin soles of his shoes and knew that he could crush that fucker on a whim. He never wanted it to stop, this high, he’d give his good gills to drink it in like ambrosia for as long as he could.

“Beg.”

Sometimes, sometimes we forget what a gift words are when we’ve got them. Nektan gagged, spat to the side and shook his head. Eridan ground his heel further down, threatening permeant damage.

“ _Beg.”_

Eridan could see it right there, the snapshot that’d be used in history books to come. Nektan writhing beneath his boot and choking out pleas. Sure he wouldn’t get the history book he’d originally wanted, he’d never be the hero of the revolution and he wouldn’t turn the royal tide for a wriggler flame. He’d never see his old friends again unless they matched blades with him or were corpses, and it was in that moment he made peace with that. 

If he couldn’t be a savior he’d be a terror. 

If he couldn’t build cities he’d demolish nations.

_I want you with me when I burn._

Eridan adjusted his grip on his blade and drove it through Nektan’s left earfin with a flick of his wrist. Nektan gargled a pained howel as Eridan drew back, adjusting his blood soiled shirt.

“Good _boy._ ” Eridan purred as Nektan struggled with the blade pinning him down. “ _We’re gonna get along pitch perfect, ain’t we?”_

Words are a gift. Eridan, in his high, had forgotten this in his daydreams of neo-dualscar biographies and war stories waiting to be written. More realistic, he assured himself, than his doe-eyed aspirations from the beginning of the Program. He already had this new narrative in the bag.

But if that were true, we wouldn’t be telling this story.

Because this isn’t a story about a violet realizing his mastrubatorydreams of historical glory. It’s a little tougher than that. A little more… hopeful.

He’d never see the battle field, he’d never level villages or lead armadas. In fact for an unrefundably large chunk of his life he wouldn’t even get to see the stars or moons or any swimmable body of water. He’d be stripped not only of his imperial luxury but the simple pleasures as well.

This is a story about silence.

This is a story about words that he can no longer speak, sign, or write. About when he thought he found a new god but instead created a devil that would follow him until his dying breath and how his childhood dreams would come true in the most fucked up way possible.

 

_"...what a trail you left across the sky when you fell."_

_"Focus."_

_"Sorry."_

 

This is the story about Eridan Ampora, the breeder-made-turncoat that helped win the war in the rebellion's favor.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO REMEMBER WHEN I SAID "I LOVE THIS FANFIC SO MUCH I COULD WRITE A FANFIC ABOUT THIS FANFIC"?
> 
> WELL HERE THE FUCK IT IS.
> 
> This has been sitting on my hardrive for quite some time now. Why now of all times to randomly boot it into the world? Mostly because I recently caught up with Saga and I'm utterly in love with the coy narration in it and thought this of course would be the absolute best place to play around with that sort of story telling. Also Eridan was mentioned for the first time in forever in homestuck canon so, here 'ya go, some misery to celebrate that.
> 
> Also I promise Parrotfish and Beatitudes are still on the table. I just had to get this out of my system before resuming work on those. Pinky promise.
> 
> Anyway hopefully this was decent enough. I'll probably roll back to this chapter and polish it up a little more in the future.
> 
> So with that... allow me to slink back into the depths from whence I came.


	2. No One Believed They Were Lovers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karkat's turn to drop some exposition on your heads.

There’s an old jades tale that nobody believes about Gl’bgolyb and Mother Grub. It goes something like a creation myth, something like a love story and for reasons beyond Karkat’s understanding only cavern workers tell it.

He heard it his first night on Alternian soil because more fucking lore is exactly what he needed to further his want to turn tail and flee back into the cosmos. Unfortunately that was no longer an option for him thanks to a certain goddamn psionic.

“ _Thank me when we’re dead.”_

_“Yeah, I fucking will you handicapped Pikachu.”_

Good news was he didn’t have to stay long, a fact he clung to as a jade named Leonus launched into the tragic genesis of his patron lusii. Karkat couldn’t have cared less at the time, but hell listening to him gave him an excuse not to wallow in the piles of grub shit out of self-loathing so he took it.

As the tale goes, Gl’bgolyb and the Mother Grub _(The Good Mother, The Blessed Mother, The Forgiving, The Waiting, The Oh-God-More-Adverbs-And-Adjectives Mother)_ are actually mutated lusii that somehow escaped the culling fork when they were young. Standing to oral tradition the story leaves out the majority of their early lives and boiled sweeps down to a bare few sentences. They were small and strange, an urchin riding on a roach’s back. They scuttled across Alternia unbothered slipping under the noses of trolls whose decedents would one day revere the two as the beginning and end of all life.

However as time went on it became tougher for the two to go unnoticed. As they grew in size so to did troll kind’s terror of them, these creatures with deafening shrieks and poisoned spines. Eventually their disturbance became too much and after the two leveled an entire royal platoon the Empress called for their capture. She aimed to dissect them and harvest whatever power they had to offer since it was plain they had plenty of it. Before long the two had an army at their heels and fled as far as the roach could go.

The easternmost coast.

It was there where they divided. Initially the empress had assumed they’d split sooner out of a base sense of self-preservation. But they held together to the end and when they did part the reasoning was far more unconventional.

The split was a willing sacrifice.

The roach _(Mother, Mother, Mother)_ knew her eventual fate and had devoted herself to preventing the same for Gl’bgolyb. The cliff she cornered herself on wasn’t random but in fact the steep ledge that overlooked the deepest ocean trench known to trollkind. Gl’bgolyb was amphibious and was hardy enough to survive the fall, she was sure, and under the waves she likely would escape unschathed.

So she took the chance.

The roach shoved the urchin off the cliff moments before their capture, fighting pincher and claw to stall the swarm of trolls so they couldn’t attempt to chase. In this the Empress only got half of what she wanted, doomed to chase after the rest of her prize for millennia. In that millennia Gl’bgolyb began to take in fuchsias in hopes that one would eventually be the one to supercede the throne and free the Mother Grub.

This went on for approximately 2,213 sweeps before coming to a close and now, a day fresh from hearing this legend, Karkat was staring down at it's end.

Unwittingly he stood on the very same cliff where Gl’bgolyb had been hurled down. At the edge he felt the teeter, the scary sense of how easy it’d be to fall as well. If anything disgust kept him back as he had no desire to bellyflop onto the writing mass that once was Gl’bgolyb.

In his arms was a sobbing 1-sweep-old. She had been the latest heiress the old abomination had been rearing before her demise and Karkat didn’t know her name let alone how to shut her up. Admittedly the cards were stacked against him seeing as the kid was currently getting an eyeful of a scene that was gruesome even by troll standards. The waves crashed fuchsia over the bloated corpse that was beaten into the cliff’s jagged edge. Tentacles and spines lifted and fell in lazy pinwheels with the oceans current, each wave break punctuated by a fleshy slap of meat against stone.

Every time Karkat tried to advert the wriggler’s gaze, to get her to stare at the trees or bury her head into his sweater, she shrieked louder and stubbornly reached and grabbed at her slaughtered lusus. Despite how it looked it wasn’t the rocks that killed monster. If it had been that simple Karkat wouldn’t have been called up in the dead of day to cart his ass back to his _beloved_ homeworld. No, there had been reports of a higher volume of imperial ships prowling the waters dumping drums of industrial waste along the eastern coast.

 _“Strategic pollution”_ Dereth had called it.

Karkat had rolled his eyes at that bit of jargon because it was just one of many tidbits that Dereth was parroting from imperial texts. He knew this because one of his childhood friends would always do the same damn thing. Except if he were to say “pollution” in any sentence it’d come packaged with a scowl and a hemophobic comment about how landwellers needed to stay out of his ocean. It didn’t help that most of the texts that Dereth indulged himself in were old books recovered from abandoned highblood hives. Karkat would bet his bulge that a shipwreck was among them and his stomach twisted at the thought of people rooting through his ex-friend’s junk.  He felt like it was a gross invasion of privacy, even if that same friend was probably off slaughtering allies in a far off star system.

The wriggler heiress wrenched him from his navel gazing by hoisting herself up by one of his horns, tiny pudgy grasp on embarrassingly equally nubby keratin. “Alright, alright.” He muttered, “enough already.”

He adjusted his grip on her as he made his way back down to the gravel beach the rest of his party had been waiting. The group—bolstering representatives from rust to jade—quieted as he approached. Tense but somehow relieved in a sense. They were probably all thankful that the heiress was still healthy enough to be making such a racket.

Most of the evening had been squandered combing the beachside for her, and when they saw the little shadow up on the cliff they feared the worse for the wriggler. Losing two fuchsias within two sweeps would have been too much but securing the heiress was just the moral boost the rebellion needed.

“Rebellion.” The word left the same salty-sour taste in his mouth that “leader” did. It felt too big, too real for such a rag-tag operation overseen by a mutant that couldn’t even handle a sickle properly.  It was a job for someone else, someone who was literally born for all this coup business.

Like Feferi.

Feferi would have made a better leader than a martyr.

“Bad?” Dereth ventured as soon as Karkat was within earshot.

Karkat nodded. “Let’s head back.”

Aside from the flurry of uneasy glances no one protested his order. They began their mostly-silent march forward, the ‘mostly’ there thanks to the freshly orphaned wriggler.

Eventually Leonus held out his arms. “Give her here.”

Karkat gladly handed her over and of course after a few minutes of professional shooshing Leon had her volume down to a still-grating but otherwise tolerable series of whimpers.

“It’ll be a long day.” Leonus muttered. “Mother’s wails will outcry hers, I’m certain.”

Karkat responded with a noise of vague agreement. If things went his way they’d be out of the caverns by the next moonrise. No more wailing grubs, no more cultish sermons given by attending jades. No more Mother-this and Mother-that. In the past twenty four hours he had gained a whole new understanding of why Kanaya had chosen to steer clear of this place. If he had to hear Leonus talk about the Mother Grub one more time Karkat was going to gouge out not only his ears but his eyes too, he was that done.

“I imagine you’ll need supplies for her travels?”

“What?”

“The _girl._ ” Leon huffed. “We can’t keep her.”

“Let me guess, because she’ll upset Mother, right?” Karkat grumbled.

“No.” Leonus stated as he smoothed down the wriggler’s hair. “But the grubs? Yes. She’s a hazard. We can’t afford having her near the young.”

“She _is_ the young!” Karkat cried, but quickly bit his lip when the fuchsia stirred with a distressed noise. He took a moment to collect himself before continuing. “I’ll bet you an imperial officer’s dead ass that her grub scars are still fresh. She can barely even speak proper alternian for fucks sake. Sure she’s not your usual but if there’s anyone who can bring her up it’s the caverns.”

Leon nodded. “Exactly. And if you can come to that conclusion, so can the Empress. She’s never trusted us. If so much as a wisp of a word gets out that the heiress survived the poisoning the Empress will be paying us a visit. Her visits are already foul enough with how she upsets Mother, I’d rather not have it be worsened with spilled blood. You must take her.”

Before Karkat could protest Dereth cut in. “He’s right. It’d be safer to take her to command.”

“ _Command?_ ” Karkat scoffed. “Is that’s what we’re calling that intergalactic tetanus shard now? _Command?_ ”

“Better than _The Flying Shit Stain.”_

“That’s a good ass name and even if it wasn’t it’s my ship so you’re gonna call it that.”

“Does this mean you’re finally admitting you’re leading us?”

Karkat fell silent. Then quietly from the folds of Leonus’s shirt, a question. “Stars?”

All attention fell to the young heiress. Two yellow eyes peeked past the jade’s shoulder, still puffy from crying. She lifted a tiny fist into the air and pointed to the night sky. “Stars. We go stars?”

Karkat traded an uncertain look with Dereth and got nothing but a shrug. He heaved a sigh and followed the wriggler’s gaze to the dust scatter of stars. Sometimes as the night drew to a close he would find himself watching the sky as he used to when he was young. He’d fill the void between light pricks with fantasies of what his friends were getting up to. How they were living. How they were likely dying. Aradia vanishing into some unexplored galaxy and uncovering alien artifacts and writing about the words they whispered to her in foreign tongues. Tavros jetting with ranch trolls and unabashedly navigating the frontier with some sort of creature at his side. Nepeta settled in a far off jungle, cut off from the political theater in favor of her claws and the taste of blood on her tongue. Vriska reigning terror on cargo holds. Equius building and Gamzee destroying. Eridan…

Eridan also destroying.

_“I’m gonna to do it. I’m gonna do it for her just you watch.”_

_Like hell._

He was done keeping tabs on some imperial sod.

He was done keeping tabs on the empire and now he had this wailing wriggler to rear, as if he were a fit substitute for Gly’bgolyb. But maybe unlike her, he’d be successful. Unlike her he’d make this suicide run of a movement into something legitimate, something that’d end up on the winning side that scribbled it into history books.

Karkat shrugged again, not taking his eyes from the sky. “Yeah. We’re going to the stars.”

 

\-- _\--_

 

The fuchsia would end up with Karkat.

Her name would be Vonnet.

Leonus coined it and it stuck, a strange-ass name for a strange-ass kid Karkat figured.

With her he was able to rally the moral of the upper class rebels, hold her up as a proper successor should he prove to be unfit in the future. Unfit because blood, ineptitude, death, anything really. Sure not everyone was a fan of keeping her around, but best to have bases covered.

Oddly enough things went more or less smoothly from there on in, or at least as smoothly as a clandestine rebel operation can go. They intercepted a few more imperial ships, gained a proper headquarters on a moon that orbited a barren planet and even managed to smuggle a few sleeper agents into the Empress’s ranks. Every time he’d get reports from their spies, he scour them for a handful of names that he didn’t know if he hoped or feared to see.

Only once he did stumble across one of them in those papers.

**_The Officers Academy For The Imperial On High._ **

_“I got in, Kar! I GOT IN!”_

Bloodpusher in throat he feverishly rooted through the folder, quickly separating the lists of graduates from the lists of culled. The graduate lists were shorter and because of this he was tempted to go over those first, but he already felt like vomiting and would rather not encourage the feeling further.

_Rip it off like a wound patch. If he’s dead, find that out first._

It took him an hour to locate the records for the two sweep window when Eridan would have attended and half that long to scan over the long scroll of everyone who had been culled. The list was packed but lacked detailed information, merely listing the name, caste and reason of culling. “Inattentive” was a the most popular reason to get the fork, and teal bloods—the lowest caste accepted into the program—made up the bulk of the dead.

Eridan’s name wasn’t present.

His chest constricted. With hope or fear, he had no idea.

He moved onto the list of graduates.

Second off the top, there he was:

 _2 nd :: AMPORA, ERIDAN :: VIOLET :: SHARPSHOOTER :: REDACTED_

Karkat’s brow furrowed. All the rest had at least a two-sentence summary of their military assignment, where they supposedly went on to serve the Empire. _Redacted._ When he ran his question by the troll who had collected the files, they shrugged.

_“Could mean anything. Honorable discharge, undercover shit they want to keep off record, becoming a lunar barracuda—anything.”_

The lists were then taken from him with a vague statement of highlighting the redacted graduates so they could investigate further.

_“Fucking fine. Just tell me if you get any news on where Ampora is. If anyone’s going to kick some sense into his Empress-fucking nook it’s going to be me.”_

And that was that, clean and tidy. Karkat never heard a word of it again for sweeps and rightfully assumed he never would. In that sense the dramatic irony that'd smother him later was much like the how he imagined the Empress.

A massive bitch.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few parting thoughts:
> 
> 1\. This originally was twice as long with another Eridan bit jammed in there, but then I decided fuck it let's have that be its own chapter to keep the two assholes divided. So depending on how editing goes I might have chapter three up sooner rather than later.  
> 2\. Cthulhu was really just an overgrown sea urchin right?  
> 3\. I refuse to believe in any universe where pikachu and pokemon aren't a thing, so have troll pikachu in the form of Sollux Fucking Captor.  
> 4\. JESUS CHRIST YOU GUYS ARE SUPPORTIVE. I was not expecting to get as many kudos let alone comments on this, so holy shit. BLESS.  
> 5\. As per usual, feel free to roast me for any spelling/grammer/general errors you find. Because I know they're in there. Somewhere.
> 
> /tapdances off into the void


	3. The Balance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
> 
> [[DUB/NONCON WARNING TAKES EFFECT HERE.]]

Eridan prided himself for being exceptionally proactive.

For example: when things go to shit he’s quick to shove blame on the nearest person place or thing. It’s efficient because it fucking works. Any complaints can be shoved right up the complainer’s ass. Because even when playing the blame game doesn’t actually fix the problem it at the very least does him the favor of providing a psychological cushion for the consequences he has to face.

So when the breeder problem arose, he dealt with it thusly: It’s genetics fault. It’s Nektan’s fault. It’s that fuckin’ whore’s fault.

Genetics because fuck the Mothergrub—he was a violet and it was against the natural order for him to be dealing with this shit. This was ochre shit. Burgundy shit. Unfortunate jade blooded soap opera shit. Socially and physically he was not equipped for these trials and if nature only fucking followed its own goddamn rules there’d be no problem in the first place.

Nektan’s fault because fuck Nektan.

Just, you know, fuck that guy.

Then there was the whore.

The whore had been a “gift” from a fellow classmate who had been trying to suck up to him in the last few weeks of the program, seeing as Eridan was obviously going places. A _“hey, remember me your old pal when it’ll inevitably fall to you and other higher ranked officers to drag some of us lower bloods up the ranks by the collar of our poorly tailored shirts”_ gift. The brown nosing troll herself was oblivious enough for Eridan not consider her as one of the three parties that actively shoved him under the fuel-guzzling public transport device. But shoving a whore at him for a night sure as hell didn’t do Eridan any favors.

On top of that the week preceding the whore incident was… strange.

It was strange for most of his class. It was the first and only week of the Program where they had absolutely nothing to do. No class, no drill, no schedule. Not that anyone could actually relax, since the following two weeks were a high-stress parade of evaluations that could easily bump a troll up or down or entirely off the roster. It was hard to tell if this break was kind or inventively cruel. Sure it gave them time for wounds to heal and notes to be reviewed but the anxiety of the wait fried the nerves.

Not that Eridan particularly cared. Unless he fucked up royally he was guaranteed the top spot. Perfectly fine. His future, secured.

And yet his body was on fire.

It had started the first night of their break. He had been winding down from a string of scrimmages with a few other students. They weren’t competitive, just a bunch of them pissing away time with dulled blades. Eridan had slipped up a few times, finding himself in holds that he couldn’t wriggle out of or pinned to the ground under three hundred pounds of purple circus ass. Naturally he grew frustrated and the headache and back cramps that blossomed during the wrestling didn’t help his mood. He eventually peeled away from the fighting with claims of a headache caused by _“how fucking basic his opponents sparring style was.”_

_“Get that bayonet out of your ass you’re just pissy ‘cause you’re losing.”_

The only response Eridan could come up with on the spot was slamming the butt of his rifle into the bastard’s head. Nobody really bullshitted him afterword, so he figured it worked. Thank the empress’s tits it did because by the time he reached his dorm he felt close to fainting. It was times like this where he was thankful Program seniors were granted legitimate dorms rather than being crammed in the barracks with all the new blood. He loathed the thought of anyone seeing him all weak in the knees. Also the smell of sweat was making him nauseous and being able to crash in his room and drown himself in his recouprecoon was a fucking gift from god.

Half past noon he jolted awake. His headache had migrated and had become a tight knot in the base of his gut that had rooted itself firmly in his unsheathed bulge. _Oh fuck me no._ After shifting a bit in his recouprecoon he finally resigned himself to crawling out and stumbling his way to the showers.

Eridan didn’t bother to throw on a pair of boxers, chosing instead to just tie a towel around his waist and call it good. He was too groggy for anything more labor-intensive and if he were to slip on any clothing he’d just ruin them anyhow what with all the soporific goo that also happened to be tinted violet between his legs.

Of the many times Eridan had been told to go fuck himself he rarely ever did. He had the sexual appetite of a black hole sure, but he’d always had a mental block when it came to the self service department. He was kind of shit at it for starters, cutting himself with his claws more often than actually finding the places that felt good. Also he could never really… picture anything without a certain degree of guilt.

Porn? Fuck, now he was thinking of the porn star’s lusus.

Friend? Oh _fuck_ no.

Figment of his imagination? Too many tentacles.

In his head, he had no business imagining people pleasuring him when he could just go out and find someone to actually do it. Yeah okay he was shit at seduction too, but at least then he was _trying_ and not just sitting around yanking his bulge too hard.

However exhausted and horny at high noon in the middle of dead week, he found himself not caring about all his usual bullshit. He just set the shower as cold as it would go for a grand total of two seconds before he decided, fuck it, might as well. Wasn’t like anyone else was around. Wasn’t like he felt his bulge would resheathe in a hurry. So he readjusted the temperature and leaned against the cold tile wall, fumbling his way to a quick and sloppy orgasm just so he could spash back in his ‘coon and sleep.

For that night one was enough. He passed out and woke up uncomfortable but otherwise functional the following evening. But then he found his mind wandering. Muscles cramping. Abdomen being dominated by a knifing pain. Becoming more and more worried that his peers could smell the desperation rolling off of him as strongly as he could. The showers went from happening daily to also nightly, twice, maybe three times to shut his libido up and smack down some of the tension that his body seemed to be building. After four nights he was beginning to get a little frightened as to what the fuck was going on and how the fuck he was supposed to resolve it.

Then the gift whore came out of nowhere and to Eridan felt like a sick joke. He feared the troll who gave it to him somehow knew, somehow picked up his slow decent into frustrated hell and had bought the night for him as a humiliation tactic disguised as a bribe. Or maybe she figured the quickest way to win his heart was to dive straight down his pants. Either way, when Eridan tried to decline she practically shoved him in one of the spare pailing rooms and barricaded the door in response.

_“Stop being so uptight! Just accept it—I know you’ll love it! And be sure to tell me how it was after! Don’t spare me any of the juicy details, I want them all!”_

Wonk-wonk a fuckin’ wonk. Eridan made note to try to get the bitch culled as soon as he had the power to.

His unease with the situation only worsened once he met the breeder he had been given the night with. After five words of introduction and pleasantry between him and the teal he owned for the night he could already feel something wasn’t right. The chemistry, the words. It was all going wrong in the back of Eridan’s head and the breeder could feel it too. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go and not in the wriggler fantasy-false-expectation sort of way. He was by no means an expert on breeders but he had read enough to know what typically went down in a generic mating session, to know this wasn’t it. Sex with breeders could be awkward sure but never unpleasurable, it was one of the reasons that made sex with a breeder so different and preferable to sex with some other layman troll.

Pheromones was the primary reason for this. A wonder of primordial science an hour in close quarters with a breeder packed a harder punch than any manufactured aphrodisiac could. It was a high to get drunk on and if exposed often enough, addicted to. _Sex so good you’ll go through withdrawal._ Countless trolls lived by this belief, this obsession that a troll never really had sex until they bedded their first breeder.

Eridan marinated in the silence and traded unsure for perplexed glances with the teal, the only feeling that sang through his body was the same queasy ache that never seemed to leave him now. He needed something. He _really_ needed something. But it sure as hell wasn’t this.

“Virgin?” She inquired, finally breaking the silence. In any other setting Eridan would have taken the question as a taunt. However confusion wasn’t the only thing he was sharing with this breeder and Eridan could pick up what she meant. _You don’t know what to do either? Is this on purpose? A joke? Is it you instead of me?_

Eridan nodded. She sighed and shrugged off her shawl. “C’mere.”

He shuffled forward, mindful of the invisible dagger cutting into his gut that was driving him to ignore her and sprint off in the opposite direction. To find whatever it was that he needed to find. “Look, my colleague’s a fuckup. You shouldn’t be here. Consider yourself excused from your duty. I won’t mind.”

“Guppy I _wish.”_ She snagged Eridan’s hand when it was within reach and guided him onto the platform next to her. “But it’s hell week of the perigee, and I’m not about to go through hell just because some aristocrat thinks he’s doing me a favor. I don’t care if you’re shit at it, I don’t care if neither of us have a good time. I just care that you cum and get me bred. Then I can leave and finally get a full fucking day’s sleep.”

Her frankness hit him like a sucker punch to the jaw. _“Sorry?”_

The teal laughed, sliding onto his lap. Straddling. He could smell her and her sweat. It was all he could do not to vomit. She rocked her hips forward, beginning a slow grind. “Look I’m fed up with the slave girl routine, and you look like a sick guppy. Figured you wouldn’t want it either. I could change my tune if you want, but fuck. That takes time. You’d rather get it done quick yeah?”

“Well yes—No—can you— _Empress tits—”_ Eridan stammered as his hands fluttered from her hips to her thighs to the hem of his own shirt before settling spread on the platform sheets. His heart was screaming. “I didn’t mean it like that—I am—I _really_ am not well and if you don’t unhand me I swear to fuckin’—I _will_ have you culled.“

She stopped, eyes narrowed. _What the fuck_ written plain and simple across her face. Good, Eridan thought, maybe she’d finally step off. Instead she rested her hand against the side of his head, threading her fingers through his hair. Coaxing it to one side. “What about a kiss?”

The quiet was so heavy Eridan could have sworn he’d gone deaf if it weren’t for his own breathing. Panting. Fucking shit was he sweating? Since when had he gotten so warm? He needed this to be over. He needed this to be over but he couldn’t bring himself to shove the teal. So he nodded, not trusting his voice not to crack with an answer. She offered him a forced smile that did little to comfort him before ducking forward and pressing her cool lips against his gills.

His mind went into a tailspin. First he’s overheated and now this lowblood felt _chilly._ A lowblood who was supposedly in heat. Bile rose further up his throat and when he began to squirm she gripped him harder. One arm coiled stiffly around his torso and the hand that had been combing through his hair moments earlier was now experimentally pinching and pressing the back of his neck, fingers putting pressure between vertebrae until—

A sharp pain bolted down Eridan’s spine and shot through his limbs, electric tingle echoing through them as he went limp against her. He gasped, gaped like he had no lungs and fell sprawled back onto the platform when she let go. While her weight had vanished from him a new unseen one kept him pinned on his back for a terrifying few seconds. He couldn’t move, could hardly breathe as if his crashing heart had monopolized all his remaining energy.

Thankfully the paralysis faded as soon as it came. First he felt his fingers and toes and eventually he was abled to drag his arms back, propping himself up on his elbows. He would have sat up fully if it hadn’t been for the dizzying wave of vertigo trying to shove him back down, ordering him to stay put.

Blearily he refocused on the teal. He spat out a string of unintelligible words before graduating to proper curses. _“Fucking bitch cunt what the fuck was—“_

Eridan stopped in his tracks. Her eyes were wide as the dormitory floodlights and her hand was clapped over her mouth. He cleared his throat, anger making a little room for nerves. “…what?”

“ _Oh guppy._ ” She whispered. “I am so sorry.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You don’t know. You poor thing. You’re family and don’t even know.” She shook her head. “You’re so young I never thought—I didn’t even know a guppy like you could even be bred—”

“—Family? _Bred?”_ Eridan was steadily regaining his wits, pushing himself up into a proper sitting position. He gingerly pressed his hand to the back of his neck, wincing at the soreness. “Fuck it, nevermind. I don’t care. Just tell me what the fuck it is you did—”

“—of course you wouldn’t know what family is, you’ve probably never seen family your entire life. They do like keeping guppies separate—”

“—my _neck—”_

“—pressure point. A specific bundle of nerves only… family members have.” She rolled the words in her mouth, he could tell she was holding something back. Something she was afraid would cow Eridan further. “It’s leftover, vestigial. Back before the mother grub when we—well, we were the only method of reproducing but we were so damn scarce, just as scarce as we are now. Hunting us down was tricky business and keeping us down even trickier. Minus a few exceptions of course only the ones of us who got caught passed down their genes, so the nerve pinch spread like wildfire and over a few generations before you know it we all had it—”

“—why we why do you keep saying we—”

“—only lasts a minute or so, and as far as I’ve felt it doesn’t do any permanent damage. Just enough to sedate us for, well, you know.”

“Us sounds no better than we.”

“You need to leave.”

 _“_ So _now_ you agree with me!”

“You don’t understand,” she hissed. “It’s a messiah-given miracle you haven’t gone into heat until now, and that you’ve run into someone who’s empathetic. I can try to smuggle you out now, seeing that you’re still more or less anonymous—”

 _“Heat?”_ The pitch of Eridan’s voice rocketed up the octaves and cracked. “I am _not_ in heat. _You’re_ in heat. You’re the breeder, I’m the client. Got it? Just because I’m havin’ a rough night—”

“How’s your gut? Is it splitting yet? Your focus shot? Having trouble thinking about anything other than the next chance you can snag some privacy to rub one out, because that’ll _certainly_ help relieve some of the pressure?” Slowly she inched forward, back to her original place next to him. Eridan watched, rigid, as she continued to rattle off every last symptom he’d suffered the past week. “But suddenly you can’t orgasm. Or at least you hardly feel it because your body just lays on the fever and pain so thick it’s hard to even tell if what you’re feeling is pleasure. Give it a few days, then you’ll be bedridden. You won’t be able to move without feeling like you’ll rip apart and you’ll be stuck that way for another week before it passes. Either that or some lucky bastard will find you. Then there’s nothing to stop nature from taking its course.”

She took his hand in hers. Squeezed it. Sypathetic.  “Especially now. First time’s always roughest.”

_Bedridden._

_Rip apart._

_First time’s roughest._

_First._

_Time._

_Lucky bastard._

Something disconnected in Eridan’s brain. A synapse snapping loose under stress, resulting in a massive amount of energy that absolutely had to be expelled. His arms snapped forward, shoving the teal off the platform and away from him as he leapt to his feet. He could see his heartbeat in his fingers, the way they twitched and flexed slightly with every crash as he held them out, willing her not to get up and grab him again.

“That’s rich.” He laughed harshly, “that’s real fuckin’ rich.”

“I’m telling the truth.” She held up her hands to mirror his. She hadn’t gotten up from where he had pushed her, her entire body cautiously taut and her voice was low and controlled as if she were talking to a spooked lusus. “Please, ah, I don’t know your name, but—”

“It’s Eridan.” He snapped. “Actually, no. _Officer_ Ampora, to you.”

“You’re no officer.”

“That’s not for filth like you to decide.” His voice cracked again and he dropped his hands, realizing how he must have looked. He straightened his back and winced at the jab of pain it caused. His hands fisted at his sides. “I will see you out. I will contact your wrangler or pimp or whatever or whoever manages you lot are called, and make sure you are properly disciplined for your actions, if not culled. You hear me?”

She opened her mouth before snapping it shut again. Instead she just stared at him, a weird bastardization of pity and disdain saturating her expression. “I said, _you hear me?”_

“I hear you.” She muttered.

“Good.” Eridan breathed. He was having trouble keeping his breath, the excitement making him lightheaded. When he stepped back he stumbled, barely catching himself against the wall. “Good.”

He left with that. Heavily relying on the wall to keep him steady as he shuffled out the room, trying to pretend he couldn’t feel the teal’s eyes digging into his back or the way his boxers stuck and slid between his thighs. How every step sparked a small jolt of pain from the comparatively rough fabric chafing against his now seemingly perpetually unsheathed bulge.

_Fuck._

_Fuck._

_Fuck._

_What do I do?_

_What do I do?_

_I fucked up._

_What the fuck do I do?_

Part of him wanted to go back and throttle the teal. Cull her then and there before she could go spewing any of her, any of her, her nonsense. Yeah that’s what it was. Nonsense. She had no idea what was going on, no idea at all. But still it would be safe to wrap up a lose end. Being accused of being a breeder was no small thing, that kind of drama could easily flush a troll’s reputation down the drain even when the claim was unfounded. Which it was. Totally was. It wasn’t worth taking the chance with her. Besides she was just breeding stock. Nobody would give a shit if she was culled as long as he paid reparations. Hell he was a highblood officer. Killing breeders in random bouts of rage was an unofficial part of his job description. His superiors would understand.

He slowed his pace, absentmindedly rubbing the back of his neck. It’d be easy. Just, turn around. Go back and snap her neck. Breeding stock were typically weaker. Typically less hardy than their hormonally balanced counterparts. On top of that, he was a seadweller and she a landdweller. He had brute force on his side.

It would work.

_It will work. Everything will be fine. I’m fine. I’m fine._

Eridan stopped at the end of the hall. Distantly he heard footsteps. _Is that bitch following me?_ He turned, but no one was there. The door to the pailing suite was shut. She was still in there. _Go back._ The footsteps were getting closer, close enough for him to realize they were echoing down from the adjacent hall.

He could smell them before he could see them. Their scent was faint but heady, with the sour edge of congealing recouprecoon goo clinging to it. Whoever it was they had just gotten up from a nap, or perhaps they had gone to bed early and was up for a abolitionblock run. When they got closer he could smell the sweat the goo masked, a sea salt musk burning his nose. They must have had a long night.

_You and me both._

That was when he knew he wasn’t going back to the teal. Whoever this was exactly, he didn’t really know or care. All he knew was that he had to get to them, _now._ Because finally, another living body close by and unlike the teal it didn’t make him want to puke. No, fuck that. They smelled _good. Really good._ So good Eridan felt like their scent was already doing the favor of fucking him before he so much as laid a finger on the other troll.

Which, in case you hadn’t already guessed, he did.

When they rounded the corner he seized them on impulse, yanking them close to his chest in a vice grip. Their response was reasonable if not a bit unsavory. The other troll shrieked and rammed their elbow into his stomach and Eridan crumpled to the ground with a labored groan. Laying on his side he didn’t bother with trying to get back up again. The pain held him captive but sure as hell didn’t stop him from grasping, reaching forward in an attempt to pull himself closer to this troll, this godsend, this ticket out of this nightmare—

_“Ampora?”_

It took Eridan a shamefully long time to process who the voice belonged to. But when it clicked, it clicked. He forced himself to look up.

He responded with a choked noise, pointer and ring claws hooked on the other’s pantleg. Nektan pulled his foot away, but Eridan could already see the way the other’s eyes was beginning to dialate, the chemicals in his brain putting two and two together before his conscious thoughts. “…are you high?”

Eridans response was about at intelligible as his behavior. “I…” He began, pulling closer. The deep breath he took in hopes to steady himself only pulled him deeper into the stupor and when he finally wrapped a hand around Nektan’s ankle it wasn’t kicked away. He used it as a tether, rolling onto his stomach and pushing himself onto his knees as he continued to struggle with his words. “I… don’t…”

His train of thought was derailed when Nektan took hold of one of his horns, pushing him back so that the only thing keeping him from tumbling over again was that grip. Eridan whined and distantly he was taken aback by the sound. He was a talker and a boisterous one at that, but he wasn’t noisy. He had always prided himself with how even in pleasure or pain, he could tamp that shit down and stay quiet. But now, with a snake of pain constricting his guts and the ache blooming in his neck from the awkward angle he was being held he couldn’t stop it. It was like the switch of self consciousness had not only been turned off but ripped out of the wall.

Nektan held him like that for what felt like hours.

Staring.

Thinking.

Realizing.

Eridan’s gaze, thanks to his position, was fixed to the ceiling. Unable to see Nektan’s expression. Unable to know what the fuck was going on in his head, not that he had a much clearer idea of what was going on in his own. Thankfully his curiosity wasn’t allowed to burn for long because as soon as he felt that second hand run through his hair all was off the rails again.

Nektan eased Eridan’s head back forward so his throat was no longer bared crooked, so that they could actually look each other in the eyes. His hand didn’t leave the horn however and his fingers still stroked absentmindedly along the side of Eridan’s head. His nails scratched in the most pleasant way and before long the stroking coaxed out a low and steady purr.

It was also at this point that Eridan stopped actively paying attention to what exactly was going on and who exactly was doing what to who. He knew the addictive musk of sweat got stronger, that at some point there was a yank and a cry and the stinging slick taste of salt dominated his tongue. His throat ached but his nook ached more, reminding him with jealous pangs that this wasn’t what he was looking for. This wasn’t enough to assuage the pain and that he’d only drop deeper in this haze of frustrated agony if he didn’t pull all the way through.

This made him panic, claws digging into day pants as he tried to pull away only to choke on a distressed noise and be released coughing through thick violet.

_“Not enough for you?”_

More coughing. More noise. More whines.

Actually, wait, no. There was one more thing Eridan was certain he saw. Two more things.

First, Nektan’s grin. All jawbeast and predatory and _screaming_ smug. But for some reason Eridan didn’t mind so much then. Pride was out the window with no chance of it returning, so really minding wouldn’t do Eridan any good. Didn’t stop him from minding later, though.

Then second, the click of a door opening. Eridan couldn’t look, couldn’t see which one it was and who was peeking out at them. But he could feel it as sure as he could smell Nektan.

_First time’s always roughest._


	4. Pride Shots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life sucks when the hormones fade and you're no longer DTF.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter. Mostly because I'm a lazy asshole, partly because I decided to cut a scene that wasn't really doing the story any favors.
> 
> Hopefully it's enjoyable all the same.

“Really down to the wire, huh?”

The troll next to Eridan—Carayn, Caprice, Cowlik he had no idea—wouldn’t quit tapping his damn foot. Steady rhythm to underscore the equally irritating conversation he was attempting to strike up. Usually this kind of fidgeting wouldn’t bother Eridan; he understood the nerve, he had a great deal of it himself lately. But this asshole was wearing unbroken dress shoes with the hard shelled soles that made every snap of his foot sound like gunfire. Fitting for a shooting range? Yes. For Eridan’s ears? Not so much.

“I said, it’s really getting down to the wire, huh.” The troll repeated when Eridan didn't answer, as if he were hard of hearing instead of just straight up not giving a shit. When he failed to respond again the tap dancing pest nudged him with the butt of his standard issue rifle. “Hey, I’m talking to you.”

“I heard.” Eridan muttered as he gripped his own rifle. Same standard bullshit as they didn’t allow personal weaponry into testing. Supposedly removed any “unfair advantages”. Which was bullshit, because after spending years with the familiar curve and weight of his crosshairs Eridan felt distinctly disadvantaged without it. He missed its comfort. He missed its certainty. His certainty. He missed a lot of things, quiet being one of them.

“I know I won’t make top marks. I’m shit at this. I’ll probably make middle grade at best.” His neighbor laughed awkwardly. “More of a threshecutioner myself. Whole reason I joined, actually.”

“Fasinating.” Eridan didn’t take his eyes off the range. A bulky blue blood was up. He wasn’t bad—no one could afford to be at this stage—but he wasn’t going to be a famed marksman that was sure. He was also taking his sweet ass time, which didn’t help ease Eridan’s nerves. He just wanted to get this shit over with.

“No reason to stress though, not that I had a chance getting into the top ten given, well, your record. Not kissing ass, just naming fact.” Another obnoxious laugh. “Okay, kinda kissing ass.”

 _Can I shoot him? I want to shoot him. Please can I shoot him._ His finger itched for the trigger but he decided to humor his neighbor instead. “I had a friend who wanted to be a threshecutioner.”

“Oh really?” The nosey idiot leaned forward, literally getting his nose into Eridan’s personal space. Eridan’s stomach twisted, bile rising when he felt breath on his skin when he turned to face him. “What regiment is he in?”

“None.” Eridan took the troll’s shoulder and pushed him back. “He’s dead.”

Dead to him at least. And probably literally dead if Eridan was going to be honest with himself, Karkat never struck him as much of a military man. He probably got culled the first week.  But details didn’t matter, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to get into them with this asshole. Who, despite going a bit pale, kept on talking. “Ah, fuck man. I’m sorry. That must have sucked. I had a wriggler buddy of mine bit it half a sweep ago, like, two weeks before final placement. Made me want to give up myself, honestly. We were close and shit got dark. Obviously I got through it, I’m here now, but the thought was there. These programs are fuckin’ brutal.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“I—okay, sorry. Of course you have.”

“No, go on. Keep telling me about the horrors the empire puts the poor lowbloods through.” Eridan muttered, scooting back. This guy kept leaning in and it was making his heart race a tic. He needed space.

“Low—okay he was teal as well so not that low. But, okay look, sorry I hit a raw nerve. I didn’t want to make it about that I was just saying—”

“I know what you were saying. The empire’s merciless.” Eridan tightened his grip. Was he shaking? He better not be shaking. _Not when he could be looking._ “It’s why we’re the powerhouse we are today. No room for mistakes. No room for deficient members. Less resources are wasted on a culled corpse than nursing mutants and failures.”

The words came out a lot faster than Eridan had anticipated, and he had to pause a moment to make sure he didn’t puke up anything more than national pride. “Everyone has their place. For most it’s in the ground. It’s a shame some of them are friends but… I commend you for making it this far. I do. But you have to abandon the notion that brutal is a bad thing.”

At last the chatterbox was silent, however Eridan didn’t have much time to enjoy the breathing room.

A whistle sailed across the shooting range. _“Ace’d it, Nektan!”_

Eridan went rigid. His gaze snapped back to the shooting range and he saw that while he was preoccupied with the tap dancer troll the blue blood had wrapped up and the next shooter had gone up. Unlike the blue blood or the majority of the trolls that came before him he hadn’t taken his time with his shots. He already had four of the required five done and despite what the suckup bouncing around in the line had shouted he had far from ‘aced it’. Bullet holes were scattered haphazardly across the dummy’s front.

Eridan gritted his teeth. Bastard wasn’t even trying.

He was shitting this performance out. He was secure enough in his score he knew he could fuck around all he wanted and still at least keep his number two slot. That’s what everyone else probably thought. No point in trying to outshoot Eridan, Nektan was going to have a little fun before settling on silver. Bile began to crawl back up Eridan’s throat as Nektan turned to the line, waving to his fan before making brief eye contact with Eridan. _You better be watching,_ that dumb fucking grin seemed to say as Nektan turned back to his target.

_Crack!_

A bullet straight through the dummy’s crotch.

Snickers bubbled down the line. The examiner rolled her eyes and jotted down his score before remarking that he wouldn’t always get away with being this coy. As Nektan turned in his rifle, tap dancer troll made one last attempt at conversation. "Is it true that you two fucked?"

There was no way for Eridan to know what kind of look he shot the troll, but if the horror reflected back at him was any indicator he should have been pretty damn proud of himself.

The examiner called him up.

The twist in his gut had evolved into a full fledged knot at this point and when he approached the range he kept his gaze fixed on Nektan’s dummy that was being taken down. Focusing on how pissed off he was at Nektan instead of everything else that was currently mixed in the emotional slurry waterlogging his brain. Disgust for himself, shitloads of pity. Weak, defeated feelings he didn’t want being broadcasted to his entire fucking class.

 

_(“Hey Eridan, remember that one shitty rainbowdrinker novel? The one with the line ‘I know what you are and I’m going to say it, say it out loud’?”_

_“That’s not—I don’t wanna to talk about this. Leave. Now.”_

_“I know what you are.”)_

“Hey,” Eridan pursed his lips and forced himself to face Nektan. Smug bastard. _Lucky bastard._ “Good luck.”

“I don’t need it.” He replied curtly.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Suit yourself.” Nektan’s grin grew. “See you at the board of regents.”

He then proceeded to swat Eridan’s backside as he passed, resulting in another batch of snickers and guffaws to erupt in the group. He was half heartedly admonished by the supervisor but nobody cared. It didn’t really violate procedure and besides at this point everyone knew how utterly black they were for eachother--no point denying it. _  
_

_"I heard they fucked, like full-on hatefucked."_

_"I_ heard  _them fucking. They've got some weird shit going on."_

_"I heard a whip."_

_"I heard a gun."_

_"_ _I heard one of them scream 'lusuii fuck me.'"_

 _"_ _Who cares? What I want to know is which one was the bitch."_  

_"Dude."_

_"_ _Ain't always a bitch."_

_"There's always a bitch. My money's on Eridan."_

_"Totally Eridan. Sylvie saw him give Nektan head in the hallway."_

_"Holy shit what?"_

_"Oh yeah. Basically begging to be raped-"_

_"-I don't think rape is the right-"_

_"-it's an expression. Jesus calm down I'm not saying he was actually-"_

_"-it was a full-on face fuck. Violet everywhere. So fucking hot."_

_"They're both so pretty."_

_"Highbloods are always pretty."_

_"God. Hello fap material damn."_

_"Wait shit he's getting closer I think he can hear-"_

_"Shut up!"_

Eridan gnawed on his lip. Focused on his hold on his rifle, his steps toward the fresh dummy being propped up at the end of the range. _  
_

 

_(“…I don’t give a shit. No one—no one will believe you they’ll think you’re just jealous that you—”_

_“If I brought it up they’d test you. Then you’d be the one they wouldn’t believe.”)_

Eridan did his best to ignore every set of eyes boring into his back as he sized up the dummy. Like Nektan he had a near immaculate score. Between his class average and how he had performed the last week, the number one slot was pretty much locked for him. Especially with Nektan throwing his marksmanship score down the load gaper it’d be harder for Eridan to lose his spot than to keep it.

 

_(“Get the fuck outta my block.”_

_“Hey, hey. I’m here to make a deal. I promise not to tell. You just got to do me a little favor. If you do that, I won’t drop by again.”)_

Eridan cursed under his breath and lined up his sites.

_Ta-ting!_

He missed the dummy entirely.

The murmurs had died out. Eridan didn’t care. He set up his next shot.

_Ta-ting!_

Another miss. The silence had given way to confused whispers. _What the fuck? Is he doing this on purpose? Is something wrong?_ Eridan’s hands were becoming slick with sweat and he swallowed down the second knot that had formed in his throat.

_Ta-ting!_

The examiner spoke up. “Mr. Ampora? Is this a joke?”

_Ta-ting!_

“You do know I have to mark these down. You don’t get a redo.”

_Ta-ting!_

He lowered his rifle. His eyes stung something fierce as he glared at the intact dummy, the scratch of the examiner’s pen making his ears itch.

“…thank you, Mr. Ampora. You may—”

_Crack! Crack! Crack!_

Eridan hurled the rifle onto the floor and stormed out. He didn’t have to give the dummy a second look to know he hit his marks—two where the dummys eyes should have been and one straight through its cotton heart. Perfect. _I can shoot perfectly. Fuck you. Fuck you all._ He barely caught sound of the upswing of babble when the doors slammed shut behind him, oh my gods and what the fucks rattling around in his ears as he hurried down the hall

 

_(“No. Fuck you.”_

_“I could ruin you. I could ruin you right now.”)_

Eridan gagged back vomit as he hurried back to his block. Part of him was waiting for something, for someone to rush after him. A concerned ‘friend’ of a classmate asking what was wrong. Nektan sweeping by to tout his victory, grinding Eridan’s humiliation in further.

 

_(Eridan was silent as he stared at Nektan. A thought similar to the one regarding the teal breeder passed his mind: kill him. Snap his neck right now. Slit his throat. Carve his heart out. Rip away his tongue and sew his lips shut. He wanted so badly to at least try it but he knew he wouldn’t get anywhere. Nektan knew too much. Intimately knew Eridan enough to know just where to hit and twist to take him down and drag him to the nearest overseer. There was no more winning the spar, no more clawing himself out. He was trapped._

_“…Fine._

_“Good.” Nektan smirked, “good boy.”)_

No one came.

Once he was in his block he wasted no time stripping down and sliding into his recoupracoon. If he had any luck, he thought, he wouldn’t have to wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tune in next time for Unexpected Betrayal with guest appearances from Horrified Karkat and Pirate Booty Vriska.


End file.
